Black Shiny Shoes
by Aunt Ginny Potter
Summary: He could hear, all these stretches of silence, imperceptible really, longer, shorter, lying, emotional, truthful and fake. All the things that made up people, all the things that hurt him because they were getting easier to recognize in others and harder to find in himself.


**Bruce Wayne gives me heartache. That's the only reason I have for this.**

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'Gotham', or any of its related trademarks.**

* * *

><p>Bruce was testing himself.<p>

It wasn't just uncomfortable, because uncomfortable was bearable. It hurt. It made him hot and sweaty. It was pure pain, and he was – he was enduring it.

He felt his hand tremble, almost forcing itself away from the flame, and he made his brain shut down its self-preserving side. He wouldn't falter. He had so very little time, he couldn't afford to.

Alfred kept finding him, but he'd gotten better at deception. At lying, and at keeping secrets. He had to, because he wasn't sure what kind of bad would happen if he let loose all the black in his mind.

It was incredible, how quickly it had set in. He had been a cheerful boy, he knew. His teachers had all called him, one by one, because 'if you want to talk, I'm here', and he was supposed to say _words_, he knew that too. But words didn't come easily to him anymore. So he would let everyone else speak. And he would listen until the silence became heavy and awkward and he had to at the very least give an acknowledging nod.

And, still, he could listen.

He got _really_ good at listening. And he didn't mean that he developed sharp hearing, though that too, in due time. He could hear, all these stretches of silence, imperceptible really, longer, shorter, lying, emotional, truthful and fake. All the things that made up people, all the things that hurt him because they were getting easier to recognize in others and harder to find in himself.

All the trust he had once given freely, it began ebbing away. With every lie he could now hear so clearly, white or black, his faith in human beings chipped away a bit further. Because a masked man with shiny shoes had killed his parents. Or maybe it was because he had let him live.

He found Alfred didn't lie to him. And neither, for that matter, did Detective Gordon.

He trusted them. So he told them. He tried to explain, but they didn't understand. He could see it in the barely contained fury in Alfred's stiffness. He could hear it in Detective Gordon's silence, so full of sorrow and pity Bruce gritted his teeth and fought the prickling in his eyes. _Strong. He could – he would – be strong._

His tests proved it. He knew that a tiny flame was not comparable to the fiery kind of sun he was willing – determined – to eventually face, but he would grow. He was a smart boy. Smarter still, now. He knew what he had to do, if he wanted what he wanted. And he knew his limits too. He knew how far he could push himself. He wasn't ready for what came after. _Not yet._

And Alfred, he had come one night, when the screams in his nightmares weren't his mother's but his own once again. Bruce had been in the kitchen, staring at a glass of water and wondering how he could start testing himself with it once he was done with the fire.

Alfred had not questioned him. He had exchanged the water for warm milk. Then he had explained that the screams his demons let out in his sleep eased and faded once he let them out himself. Bruce had asked who wanted to hear screaming, and Alfred had sighed, patted his shoulder, and said sometimes an empty room sufficed. Others, a crowded one was useless.

And then he had said that he, Alfred, was neither, and he would be willing to hear them anyway. Bruce didn't scream at him. But he didn't change his mind either. Because not all his demons let out screams. Some just let out bullets.

So he kept any additional explanations to himself. He heard – properly, this time – what Detective Gordon said, and he accepted that he could not do his tests any longer in front of Alfred. That was what he summarized the conversation to. Everything else was part of _what came after_, and the _not yet_.

He allowed himself the comfort of having Detective Gordon on the case until he stepped in.

He _would _step in. One day.

One day when the darkness was all gathered and tucked into him safely and powerfully.

But it was not, because this was always the moment he remembered he was but a boy. He remembered that all these silly fantasies he built up in his head, with the blackened infrastructures, were not steady. They could crumble with the softest of touches. He meant that literally. He remembered how they had crumbled when Alfred had hugged him. (He was afraid of others with the same power, others capable of showing him what peace was, what it was that he could never have now.)

But they came back. And they would keep coming back. Maybe it would probably be wise to keep Alfred around. Then again, sometimes he felt he needed the black and the dark.

At least, until the light came. Detective Gordon had promised, hadn't he?

It wasn't time yet, though. For now, the dark seemed safer, outside, inside, everywhere, casting shadows on his memories so that he would never watch mom and dad die again. (Nor their hugs and kisses and smiles and love, but that was beside the point.)

Bats were pretty dark. Blind, too. He felt sort of blind. If he was blind, maybe that candle's light would stop burning him. Then he could speed up being strong.

It took him a few times and a nasty scar. But eventually, the nerves on his hand started to numb.

That mugger with the shiny shoes had let him live. Maybe out of pity. Maybe with an ulterior motive. He didn't know.

What he was starting to know was a new, thrilling and terrifying piece of knowledge. Because he _would _be strong. He was convinced of that now. He would be strong and he would be stronger. And, one day, he'd be strong enough.

The mugger with the shiny shoes might have made one of his worst mistakes. Bruce was burning with the satisfaction the idea gave him.

But he wasn't wary, not yet. And maybe that was his mistake too.


End file.
